The origination of RedFlag2000 Software CO.,LTD (RedFlag2000 Company for short) can be traced back to 8th May, 1999, when China's Embassy in former Yugoslavia was bombed. This event is an alarm for Chinese people, especially for persons of insight in information industry, and then our government quickly made a determination to develop the basic software and CPU independently. Professor Sun Yufang, the former Vice Director of Software Institute under Chinese Academy of Sciences(CAS), pointed out that the Software Institute should do something in developing domestic Operation System(OS). Therefore, developing Redflag Linux was put on the agenda, the preparation and planing of which involved Hu Caiyong who had been working for many years in China Open System and Chinese Processing Center of Software Institute under CAS. After that, Professor Sun reviewed the experience and lessons drawn from the fact that the China-made OS Cosix was successful in technology but failed in marketing, and put forward an idea to establish the RedFlag2000 Company, the preparation of which was made by Hu Caiyong who left Redflag Linux team hereinafter. In December 2000, RedFlag2000 Company was founded officially.
The company fixed its target on office software after six months' discussion and the following points were taken into consideration:
1、It was certain that China would enter WTO then, which required us to take effective measures to protect legal software so that the software industry environment would be improved in China.
2、Office software is so basic and necessary in every computer that it enjoys a broad market, however, only Microsoft produced software then, which was very expensive.
3、There was no mature cross-platform office software, leaving a large untouched market and meanwhile it was an great opportunity.
4、Open Source Software OpenOffice.org is mature enough to allow us to produce cross-platform software based on it within a relatively short period.
In 2001, RedFlag2000 officially released Chinese office suite, the first cross-platform software in China, named RedOffice by Professor Sun, Sprang into fame in the first campaign of governmental procurement of copyrighted software launched by Beijing Municipal Government in December, 2001. In this procurement, China-made OS Redflag Linux and Chinasoft Linux won the bid and the China-made office software WPS and RedOffice replaced Microsoft office in an all-round manner; while Microsoft was fully out of the OS and office software market in China, paying a high price for its arrogance and monopoly. This event gave rise to a global influence resulting in the change of the top leaders in China Microsoft. Moreover, the U.S. government took all-round measures and the former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger made a special trip to Beijing for mediation, but failed to change the situation.
From the good beginning Redoffice and RedFlag2000 gradually become known to more users, but in fact, RedFlag2000 did not see a smooth road in the development. In 2003, the unexpected SARS disaster badly influenced lots of software enterprises in China, including RedFlag2000, which lost many contracts and orders, and what was more, the work of the copyrighted software for governments and enterprises campaign was delayed to a unknown time after the early publicity work and mobilization. After SARS passed, governments of different levels and enterprises were all busy in recovering from the disaster, without any energy to continue the copyrighted software campaign, which reduced Redflag into the lowest ebb. From the above experience we have learn an important lesson that the domestic basic software cannot live without the nation's stability and prosperity.
At the second half of 2004, China's governmental procurement of software started officially in an all-round manner. RedOffice has repeatedly broken the monopoly of Microsoft Office through its outstanding performance, winning the first-ranked market share among domestic software. One remarkable event is that Microsoft reduced its Office product price from 2600 to 880 yuan per set. The China-made software had brought about substantive economic interests by breaking the monopoly, and just from this perspective, China had been rewarded for all the investment in the basic software during the 10th five-year plan.
In order to better promote RedOffice's wide application, RedFlag2000 first put forward the innovated idea of closely integrating China's office software with e-government needs, and in accordance with the characteristics of the government office work, refined the application interface for system integration, which can be perfectly embedded to a variety of e-government system to meet the needs of government offices, breaking vicious phenomenon that China-made office software just simply imitate Microsoft Office. This innovation has been greatly recognized by market and users and a growing number of provincial and municipal governments choose to use RedOffice office software for daily office work. By now, RedOffice software has been adopted in hundreds of provincial and municipal governments, including Beijing and Guangdong. In Guangdong Province, the three pilots for China-made software led by the Office of Information Industry, used RedOffice software only. In governmental procurement, in addition to Guangzhou City, RedOffice also won the bid exclusively in Shenzhen, Dongguan, Heyuan, Jiangmen, Yunfu and Zhanjiang, etc, among which Shenzhen City procured 15,000 set RedOffice software in a site authorized way. In Gansu Province, governments of city-level, county-level and district-level all use RedOffice software under the recommendation of the Ministry of Information Industry. At the same time, RedOffice also actively expands industry and enterprise markets, and have been widely used in many industries, including Water Conservancy, Electricity, Tobacco, Pharmaceuticals, Steel, Coal, etc.
In May, 2006, RedFlag2000 joined Sino-i Technology Group, relying on which the company achieved great development and was strong enough in technology and marketing to compete with the giant monopolies. At present, there are more than 300 persons in our technical team, committed to promoting the comprehensive innovation of RedOffice and the re-definition of office, so that the domestic software really has its own characteristics and advantages. In the latest version of the RedOffice, a brand-new and menu-styled design against traditional office software, returning the core to users, applying the allegorically graphical interface instead of the traditional menu interaction. At the same time, with outstanding technical capabilities, RedOffice has successfully accomplished several national research projects (863 projects) and many municipal projects and obtained the support of national funds. For instance, RedOffice was included in the Torch Plan of Science and Technology, winning the first prize of Beijing Scientific and Technological Progress. In addition, RedFlag2000 has made an outstanding contribution to the creation and realization of the national standards for supporting document format and to the close cooperation between China's open-source community and international open-source community and so on, enjoying a great respect from this industry.
At present, RedFlag2000 is going forward towards the goal of becoming internationally renowned software enterprise.
